Toku walked home slowly—he was too busy thinking to be in a rush. Master Aleric had given him the day off after Master Leicho had left. Even though Toku had wanted to tell his master exactly what he had seen and felt, he was too tired to deal with it at the time. When Aleric had mentioned going home, all Toku could think about was getting back to his bed. But now, walking through the dreary tunnels near Aleric's lab, he was regretting not at least asking Master Aleric why the king was recruiting alchemists. He was also wondering if he had ruined his chance. True, Master Leicho would be a frightening taskmaster. But the chance to work for the king was too good to be true. Even the chance to meet the king in person would be worth enduring all of Master Leicho's terror for a few years. The king was a hero! It was only because of his efforts that the Lower Kingdom had the food and supplies that it did.

Toku considered turning around and heading back to the lab, but right then he passed by a tunnel out of which a long line of young miners was streaming. As Toku waited for the group to pass he stared up at the far-off vaulted ceiling of the Crossroads. He could not remember in his reading ever having come across a situation like the one he had faced today. Certainly you could fail at a reaction, but how could you just disintegrate the atoms into nothingness? The primary law of alchemy is the law of conservation of mass—those atoms had to have gone somewhere. Just as you cannot make something out of nothing, you also cannot make nothing out of something. But there was absolutely no trace of that block of ore anywhere in the lab after they had cleaned up.

Toku's thoughts were interrupted by a sudden jab in his side. Turning around, a young girl, about his age, stood before him. Although she wore a worn-out mining suit covered in dirt and mud and her hair, rolled up in the back, had been mashed and matted down from long hours underneath a mining helmet, she was nonetheless beautiful—and her beauty was not wasted on Toku. She had a youthful energy about her that showed in her rosy face. Her hands, though dirty and calloused, were still feminine and had not lost their delicate touch. However, at this moment those delicate fingers were curled up in a not-so-delicate fist that was quickly approaching Toku's stomach.

"Hey, Alchemy Boy!"

The fist came to a screeching halt the moment before it would have mashed all the air out of Toku's lungs. Toku did not even have time to flinch. But now a big grin came over his face, just as a smile spread over the girl's face as well.

"You owe me one, Alchemy Boy. I could have gutted you right then. That's the problem with you thinking types—always have your head so far up in the clouds you can't ever see the important stuff."

"And what would the important stuff be, Sakura? I'll have you know that I was just thinking about how I owed you a drink at the Skie from a few days ago...but if that's not important to you, I guess I just won't worry about it then."

"Now hold up there, you fast talker! Don't think you're gonna get out of it that easily. We can go settle that score right now."

Sakura and Toku had been friends and neighbors for about five years now. Her father had worked in the king's household as the Master Engineer, so Sakura had grown up there until about six years ago when he was killed in a cave-in. Her mother had been trained as a miner, so when she started working to support the family, they had all moved down into the Third Residential Shaft, where many of the mining families lived, next door to Toku's family. Although she had to work in the mines to help her mother with the money, Sakura was training to become an engineer like her father. She was actually quite brilliant, and she and Toku had spent many dull days happily crafting new and strange inventions out of things they could find in their own homes.

Now they both walked along the edge of the Crossroads to the next shaft which led to the favorite hang-out of the miners and many of the kids—the Skie Pub. Toku and Sakura often met here after their work to rest and relax for the evening. Usually they just got water or some beer, but sometimes the Skie got special shipments of surface drinks. Usually the prices were too expensive, but sometimes if they pooled their money together, Sakura and Toku could afford a small glass of grape juice or apple juice. Today, though, they got a table in a dark corner and ordered a couple mugs of water and a small plate of fried mushrooms.

The Skie was pretty empty at this time of day. The bitter odor of beer, cooking mushrooms, and the sweet aroma of the occasional glass of juice filled the room. When the big rush came after the miners finished work for the day, the dark little room would become a packed sardine can of bodies smelling like burnt gunpowder, sweat, and the earth. Toku was glad the chamber was empty right now. He wanted to talk to Sakura about the day's events, but he didn't want anyone hearing in.

"So, why are you off so early?" Toku asked.

"Well, it's really kind of strange, now that I think about it. They started that new shaft today, you know?"

"Yeah, my mom and dad said last night that they were helping crack it."

"Yeah? Well, when I got over to my shaft this morning, the foreman told us all to go home. They have us set up on a rotating schedule to work on the new shaft around the clock. My shift starts later, at the third bell."

"Weird! What's the shaft for?"

"Well, that's the other strange thing—nobody seems to know. Or, at least nobody in my section knows, not even the foreman. If you ask me, I think the top-siders have something to do with it. You heard about the 12 more soldiers we lost trying to break out the Top Wall, didn't you?"

"No, I hadn't heard that. That makes 86 in the past six months. I just don't understand why they won't leave us alone down here. Don't we mine them enough gold already? What harm could there be in letting us outside to see the sun and farm our own grapes and wheat for a change?"

"Come on, you know that won't ever happen in our lifetime. Those top-siders are just greedy. They don't want to give up any land to us. We're just a convenient slave work force to them. They could just let us starve down here and what would it matter to them? They would just have to start mining the place for themselves, that's all. We're expendable. That's why we have to find our own way out—by force. That's the only negotiating tool we have left."

Toku wanted to change the subject. Even under normal circumstances talking about the war with the surface always made him feel uncomfortable for some reason, but even more than that, today he wanted to tell Sakura about Master Leicho and what had happened to the lead ore. As Sakura stopped talking to take a swig from her mug, Toku took advantage of the break in conversation.

"Leicho Gin was at the lab today."

Sakura nearly spit out her water. She just managed to force the drink down her throat before grabbing Toku by the shoulders and nearly shaking him to death.

"Are you serious? This is news! Why was she there? What did she want? What did she look like? Was the king there, too? Why didn't you say anything!?"

"No, it was just her. I'm not sure exactly why she was there, but she had me do an experiment for her and said something about recruiting alchemists for the king."

"Recruiting alchemists? What for?"
"I don't really know. It sounds like there must be some big job."
"So...how did you do?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you said she was recruiting alchemists, and you had to do alchemy for her...so how did you do? Did you get recruited or what?"
"Well...actually...that's kind of what I wanted to talk about. Something weird happened with the experiment today."
"Weird? You know I think alchemy is just weird in general. I'll never get how you can just move atoms and stuff around with your mind. But go ahead...tell me what happened."
"Well, I've been having problems concentrating for a while now. So, with Master Leicho there and all, I told myself that I was not going to lose my concentration. So, I had to separate this lead ore. There are a bunch of different types of atoms all mashed together and you have to find the lead ones and...” Sakura's face was starting to glaze over a bit, while she clenched and unclenched her fist. This was Sakura's way of telling Toku she didn't want to hear about the boring details and that if he didn't hurry up he might finally get that punch to the stomach. Luckily Toku sensed the warning and he quickly moved on. “Well, anyway, when I went to separate it, something happened, and it started to...hurt. And then the ore just disintegrated, and everything blew up."

Now that he said it, Toku thought it sounded too weird to be true. The confused look on Sakura's face did not make him feel any better, either.

“So, it exploded, huh?” asked Sakura.
“Yeah.”
“How big?”
“Pretty big,” Toku said, hiding his face in his hands.
“So, I'm guessing you didn't get recruited then, huh?”
Toku sighed. “Probably not.”
Sakura knew Toku better than just about anyone. And right now she knew that he was worried...it was written all over his face.

“Listen, Toku, I'm no alchemist. But maybe we can figure this thing out. Give me the details, the best you can.” She didn't know if she could really help or not.

But talking about it can't hurt, she thought to herself.

Toku went home that night without any answers to the many questions flying around in his head. It helped a little to tell Sakura what had happened, but he knew she would be no help in figuring it out. As brilliant as she was at engineering, she knew nothing about alchemy, and the most she could muster was a concerned ear, a consoling hug, and a free drink. Given Sakura's reaction, he decided it really would not help things at all to tell his parents about the day's events, and he certainly did not want to worry them with something they could not understand. No, all that remained was to wait until tomorrow and ask Master Aleric. At least Aleric would understand—even if he did not have any answers.

"Hi, Mom...Dad. I'm home," Toku said as he pushed open the door into his family's chamber. Dinner was laid out on the small, stone table. Mushrooms, water, and some dried meat. The usual fare.

"We've been waiting for you, Toku. Where have you been? Did Master Aleric have you stay late today?" his mother asked as she put the finishing touches on the table.

"No, actually he let me leave early. I spent the afternoon with Sakura. She got off early, too."

Toku's father appeared from the back of the room, dirty and tired from the day at the mines. The Ai family ate dinner that evening in the silent, methodical mood that often pervades a household after a hard day of work. Toku's mother and father had been given the dubious honor of working a double shift, leaving them both ready to collapse after the meal. They did not even take the time to make their customary after-dinner tea. Luckily for Toku, no one really felt like talking. His parents went straight to bed and Toku spent the rest of the evening trying to stay busy by polishing his equipment and taking some notes on an interesting technique he had read about the night before in one of his alchemy manuals. Unfortunately, the silence of the evening only caused Toku's worries and doubts to fester and boil in his soul, even as he tried to stay busy. When he went to bed that evening he knew there was no way he would be able fall asleep. He laid in bed, the leather covers pulled up only to his waist. He ran the experiment over and over in his mind. He had done everything properly. The alchemical basin had looked perfectly clean and prepped. After all, it had been Master Aleric who had set out all the equipment.

But there was no way he, Toku, a simple apprentice, could have destroyed those atoms. He did not know of any alchemist who could do such a thing. Sure, the king had used alchemists to torture and execute people before, but that just called for transmuting people's insides. Not a pleasant thought, but a far cry from actual disintegration. What Toku had done made no sense at all. It seemed to even defy the fundamental law of alchemy: the law of conservation of mass.

As these thoughts went round and round in Toku's head, before he even realized it had happened, he had fallen asleep. His breathing slowed, and his mind finally let the worries of the day slip away into the blissful peace of the dream world. Unfortunately the peace did not last long. After only a few minutes of sleep, Toku awoke with a start. The same pain he had felt during the experiment jabbed at his mind again.

Toku sat up, breathing hard. The pain was gone. He began wondering if it had just been a dream. But, just as he was laying his head back onto the bed, the pain struck again. This time it was accompanied by a picture that burned itself into Toku's mind. He saw a ball, a strange ball. It was perfectly round and beautiful. The surface was smooth as glass, but Toku could not figure out what it was made of. It did not seem to have any color specific to it. Or, Toku later thought, it was more as if it was every color, all at the same time. But somehow the colors did not combine like they do in white light. You could see every color distinctly, but all at once. It was beautiful to behold.

But Toku was not allowed to appreciate the radiant sphere for long. The hot spikes once again thrust deeply into his head, searing heat pouring through the image in his mind, sending invisible flames down his spine and through his whole body. Toku grabbed his head in agony. He thought he could smell the pungent odor of burning sulfur in his nostrils. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but he had no control over them. The the horrible blood-boiling pain began to consume even Toku's consciousness, the picture of the sphere in his mind was consumed as well. He saw the flames lick at its center, and just like the galena before, the ball lost its radiant splendor and vanished into deep, black nothingness.

But the darkness did not remain. Another vision quickly filled the void, and the pain seemed to subside for a moment. This time Toku saw what looked like the back of a rough-cut mine shaft. The steel support frames had not even been put up yet. Suddenly the back wall of the shaft disappeared, but not in the way the sphere or the lead had been consumed by flames. This time the wall collapsed in, and a torrent of water filled Toku's vision, pouring out of the opening and flooding the mine with the angry force of a thousand explosives. As the water rushed towards him, the pain grew and finally became too much. Toku's horrible vision faded into nothing as darkness overtook him. But at least the pain was gone.

Toku awoke early the next morning feeling surprisingly refreshed. The pain of the previous night lingered in his mind only as the faint memory of a bad dream. Quickly throwing off his bedclothes, Toku dressed in his alchemical robes, and trotted out of his room. It was so early that his parents were not even up yet. So, he decided to take a walk to the Crossroads, and maybe even get an early start in the lab.

One of the great things about living underground, where there is no day or night, is that someone is always out and about. Naturally, most people worked during the normal times, starting at the first bell and stopping at the third, but there were enough miners who had third and fourth bell shifts to keep most of the larger merchants in the Crossroads open all the time.

Today Toku left the Ai family chamber just after the sixth bell, with the first bell still a while off. Of all the times of day, this was probably when the least number of people were about, so the Crossroads was relatively empty when Toku stepped out into it from the Third Residential Shaft. Seeing none of the merchants he knew, Toku decided to take a look at the new shaft. It had been so crowded the day before he had never gotten a good view of it. At this time, however, the new hole was practically empty. It was amazing how much progress the miners had made taking round-the-clock shifts. Already they had descended so far that Toku could no longer see the workers at the end of the tunnel.

Remembering that Sakura was supposed to have the night shift, which meant she probably was still working down at the head of the new shaft, Toku decided to walk down into the darkness to surprise her. Normally he would have had to get permission from the foreman, but as no one was around, Toku didn't figure there would be any harm. He was well known among the miners, anyway, as he had often visited his parents when he was younger.

Starting down the shaft, Toku thought he could hear the far-off echoes of pickaxes and shovels. They must have finally gotten to softer ground so that explosives were no longer necessary. The floor and walls of the new shaft were surprisingly rough. The miners were all masters of their craft, having passed the art down for generations, and usually walls were bored out as smooth as the surface of water. Here, however, Toku found himself stumbling over loose stones and bumping against jagged edges and outcroppings. It was strange. The only explanation Toku could think of was that they must be mining so quickly that the normal quality standards were being ignored.

Even more strange was that Toku suddenly found that he could no longer see clearly. It was as if he had suddenly stepped into a deep shadow that engulfed all the light. Toku's eyes, while well adapted to the darkness, were just like our eyes in that they still need some amount of light to be able to see. Somehow, this shaft had suddenly descended into the earth such that absolutely no light reached him anymore. Toku was as blind as you or I would have been.

This was not altogether unheard of. Occasionally a mining shaft delved so deep into the heart of the earth that the ambient light from the Crossroads no longer reached into the depths. The miners used smokeless lamps in these circumstances. Toku expected to see the sharp glow of the smokeless lamps at any moment. He could distinctly hear the bright, clear sounds of metal pounding into rock below him, yet the darkness persisted. Blindly he shuffled his way along, using the wall as his guide.

He felt his right hand suddenly leave the wall, or rather the wall left his hand. This makes sense, Toku thought. The shaft has turned. That's why I couldn't see the lamp. But as he turned the corner, he had the strangest feeling that he was somehow leaving the main shaft. Maybe it was because the sound of the workers was becoming fainter rather than closer. Or maybe it was because the walls were becoming more and more narrow. Whatever the reason, Toku felt the first twinge of fear begin to build up in the form of a solitary butterfly inside of his stomach. He began to wonder if it would not be a better idea to turn back. Just as he had made the decision to head back if he did not find the miners in the next twenty steps, he heard a voice.

Halting, Toku trained his ears into the darkness, trying to pry the noise he thought he had heard back from the cold stone walls. Barely breathing, his ears perked up. He heard it again. It was definitely a voice, though he could not make out what it was saying. Feeling his way again along the edge of the cavern, he called out.

"Hello? Who's there?"

No response. He rushed along faster. What if someone was caught in a cave-in? What if someone was injured, lost, dying? The rough stone beat against his feet and legs, but he still shuffled along as quickly as he dared. He thought he heard the voice again. He was getting closer. He put on one more burst of speed, his conscience crying out for him to hurry. Suddenly, his nose smashed into a low-hanging rock.

Toku collapsed to the floor, holding his nose. He rolled over on his back and felt a sudden gush of blood running down the back of his throat. He quickly sat up and spat out the blood. His nose was bleeding, but he didn't think it was broken. Using his sleeve to stop the flow of the blood, Toku began to stand up, but he quickly stopped. Just before him, levitating in the darkness, was the strange but beautiful sphere from his vision. The mysterious globe seemed to float in the darkness. Slowly Toku realized this was not the case. It looked like it was levitating because, while it appeared to be radiating its own light, the light refused to fall on anything around it. It was as if the light given off by that ball was so pure, or so complex, that nothing else could reflect it. Toku had not been able to see the sphere ahead of him because the shaft had suddenly grown about half as tall. He was really at the end of what could be called a tunnel. The sphere rested at the very end of a large crack that slithered around for about two meters beyond the shaft.

Forgetting about his bloody nose, Toku pushed himself along the ground towards the orb. As the ceiling fell lower and lower, Toku found himself stretching and straining to reach the radiant ball. When he was finally so far into the crack that his body was wedged against the ceiling and the floor, he reached out, as far as he could, to grab the beautiful sphere. It fit easily in his hand.

This surprised Toku at first because he had the impression that the ball was much larger. As he allowed his sense of touch to familiarize his mind with the globe a little more, he realized that this impression came from the utter darkness around it. The radiance the ball had in the dark made it appear to grow and encompass everything around it. Because he could see nothing else, Toku's mind had made the decision that nothing else existed, and so the ball appeared to him expanded into mammoth proportions. But, now that he held it in his hand, Toku understood his mistake, and everything was once again brought into perspective.

Crawling backwards on his belly, Toku made his way out of the narrow tunnel. When it became large enough that he could turn around, he stashed the mesmerizing ball into his pocket and started the trek back to the Crossroads. He no longer thought about finding the miners or the voice he had heard in the darkness. All he wanted was to get the ball back to the safety of the lab where he could study it more closely. It really is beautiful, Toku thought. He could not wait to get it back out and see it again. Toku was too excited to notice that the darkness that had blinded him coming down the tunnel had lifted. He could see clearly once again.